Optimal reservoir production scheduling by using reservoir simulation

This paper addresses the optimization of field operations under a given set of technical and economic constraints and demonstates that an optimal control procedure may be applied to any industrial oil and/or gas reservoir at reasonable cost and at acceptable accuracy level. Both primary and secondary recovery processes can be considered. The method proposed here is presented in two main sections. First, the modeling phase provides an approximately and locally linear model of the reservoir. A previously calibrated reservoir simulator model is used to perform a series of experiments, and a multiple variable regression analysis is used to fit the experimental data. The experimental design was one of the key issues in this work. Second, the optimization phase is performed with a linear programming algorithm. Nonlinear effects, such as those generated by the presence of gas, are approximated by several procedural iterations. The application of this method to the case of a hypothetical reservoir demonstrates the validity of the optimal control procedure and shows convergence within an acceptable number of iterations.